This game is timeless. It was released in a time when the arena FPS was on its way out and server browsers were still the norm for PC online multiplayer, yet it has hardly aged.
With hindsight, I view this generation of the Pokémon series as an awkward transition to 3D. It’s pretty apparent in the graphics and UI that Diamond/Pearl/Platinum are essentially upgraded GBA games. 3D effects occur only sparingly, and I remember the backpack UI bizarrely having an iPod-style scroll wheel on the touchscreen.
The following generation got more adventurous with the 3D and started using the DS touchscreen more effectively. The “sprite puppet” effect in Black/White looked janky as heck but I honestly loved it anyway. The character sprites in Cassette Beasts worked similarly, which I guess is another reason I liked that game.
Also, man, the pacing of battle animations and UI is so slow in this generation.
We are always allowed to admire oddly hi-fi graphics. I love shaking the vodka bottles in Half-Life Alyx. The liquid inside waves and bubbles and if you hold it up to a light source, the light glows through!
My build for Settlers league was the most fun map blaster I’ve ever made. I made a melee witch (occultist) with Viper Strike that could one-shot entire packs and some map bosses! Just running up to a pack and slapping it and running off.
It was absolute garbage at bossing, though. The survivability was softcore/10.
This is hardly news. Path of Exile has server queues at the start of every major launch. I think it’ll be great news if absolutely nothing goes wrong with the launch.
I’m not familiar with the games you mentioned, so I went to check them out. And look what we have on the Steam store page!
Reviews
“It shares some of the feeling of Her Story, albeit featuring today’s technology and with less of a focus on the crime angle. But it has the same small moments of revelation, all of which come together to form a story in its own neat yet meandering way.” Rock Paper Shotgun
I left my computer to go out with friends to have wings. I was thinking about the puzzle I left behind on the trip there. I was trying to draw the patterns on my phone while we waited. This game gets into your head.
Her Story is a detective game that starts with you sitting at a computer, not even knowing what mystery you’re supposed to investigate. You have to search through the computer’s database for police interview footage to figure that out. Then you have to figure out the answer to the mystery you think you need to solve. The interview clips have a lot of details for you to track and link together. I had to make a big chunky note for this game and even had to implement a system to keep track of the likelihood of the statements.
If you want more point and click adventures, try the Submachine series, which was originally in Flash but now remastered as a ten-game compilation called Submachine: Legacy. The developer trained as an architect, so you get to admire intricate, hand-drawn architecture porn. It starts off as a typical 00s Flash room escape, until you realize it was all a… hallucination. You realize that you’re actually going to explore a vast, utterly lonely underground world as you try to track down the only person who seems to know how to get out. Teleportation and parallel universe travel come up a lot in the series, so keeping notes will be useful. Incredible dark ambient soundtrack, too.
About that blood. Valve forgot to remove it before submitting the game for age ratings, and despite multiple updates over the years, they’ve never bothered to address this. Also, I wish Portal 2 had hard-mode remix chambers like 1 did.